While digital cameras do have “sports” or “action” settings to make taking photos of fast moving sports easy, simply using this setting is not enough to get the best results. Unlike other forms of photography, in the digital photography of sports the person using the camera has a large role to play – the timing of the photos is crucial and there is only a split second to take it.

When taking pictures of action moving around a playing field you have two options. Your first option is to follow the action as it moves around the field with your camera ready to take the photo the moment the action you want to capture occurs – this is the best way of taking picture of sports where the action can occur anywhere, like hockey and football. The other way is better for games where you can predict where the action will occur – the home plate in a baseball game or the basket in a basketball game – and can keep the camera pointed in that direction so you can click when the action moves into the frame.

No matter how fast your trigger finger is on the shutter button, there will always be a time lag between the button being pressed and the picture being taken as the camera will need to set itself to take the picture. Although this time lag is almost imperceptible – only a fraction of a second – that is enough for you to miss the crucial moment. You can solve this problem by keeping the shutter button pressed half way so that the camera is always in the auto focus mode and no time will be lost between the pressing of the button and the shutter action. Another tip is the use the “burst” or “continuous” mode where the camera will continue to take a rapid series of pictures for as long as the button is pressed. In this way you will get a number of photos taken in a few seconds and can choose which the ones that you want to keep are.

Another cause of camera delays in the digital photography of sports is that until the previous photos has been written to the memory card, the next one cannot be taken – a memory card with a slow write time will delay the taking of your next picture. Invest in a card with a high write speed to reduce the intervals and delays.